Amphetamines at Dawn

It's 3:02 AM and you're staring dully at the computer screen, wondering how exactly to phrase your current state of mind. Is it "You can't think"? No. More "You can't not not think"? Maybe.

Can't not not think you you think cannot can't not think thinking cannot think think you.

Jesus. Perhaps you are "Unthunk". This does not sound right either, but you are glad to have an answer. For the thousandth time tonight you close your eyes, resting muscles that are well into overtime at this point. The feeling is relief, extreme but temporary. You are too awake to keep them closed for long. Indeed, you are in a paradoxical state of wide-awake exhaustion. The mental fatigue hangs over you like toxic haze but your body is full of ambitious energy. The drug opens channels in your brain that haven't seen action since the pre-Neolithic era, when man still relied on fight-or-flight. Your heart beats faster, your hand moves quicker, and your eyes don't miss a thing. You are always in tachycardia. Tachycardia is always in you. Tachycardia are in you always.

So very tired now. Wish for death. Deathwish. Dreamwish. Dreamwich. Sandwich. This drug will not let you eat. No, not true. It will not even let you want to eat. Food will lose all pleasure, still tasty, but the taste will lose all emotion. You have not eaten in three days and your stomach hurts. It is so empty that it hurts to drink water. Water hurts. Water should never hurt.

Somewhere in the house you hear a voice call your name, softly. You whip off the set of headphones you were wearing and spin around. You do it without thinking, because instinct runs your mind right now. You're scanning the wall of your own bedroom and then you remember.

It's just the psych. Psyche, sike! The playground game is no longer funny to you now. Stupid kids. I hated those kids! Fuck them! Fuck them in the face!

What the hell are you saying again? Again. You entertain the idea of shutting everything down and lying on your bed with your eyes closed, pretending to sleep. Your eyes like this idea, but the rest of you rejects it. It's that ambitious energy you were talking about. The energy of ambition.

You are at the bedroom door, you are walking down the stairs, lurching right along. You reach the front door. You headbutt it once, with great enthusiasm. It doesn't hurt too much. Wonder about what kind of material the door is made of. Instantly recall not only material, but exact dimensions, the store you bought it from, the design aesthetic, and the name of the Lowes employee who recommended it to you. Holy shit. You grab the doorknob impulsively. Impulse is good. It means the drug will wear off soon. Finally. But not yet.

You swing from the knob onto your front steps and momentum propels you off of them, flying, gliding, soaring.

You land on your feet and disprove Newtonian physics at the same time. You pause. Then run!

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Your legs give out before your chest does. Your pulse must be something stunning, you think. Then you teeter and totter drunkenly for a few more steps before you fall. You like to think you fall like a great tree, slow and tragic. In reality you fall more like a club-footed blacksmith and hit the ground as a heap of awkward flesh. It hurts a little to hit the sidewalk with your face like that, but you don't care. Your last thought is that your limbs are in funny, uncomfortable positions but you are too tired to move them. You are TIRED---!

And then you are not. You wake in perfect serenity, rejuvenated by the rays of warm summer sun. You peel your cheek off the concrete, wiping away the dirt and scabs. The pain feels good, somehow. Refreshing.

Something prickles on your arm. It is a spider with long legs and an obese, brown-orange abdomen. Carefully, you nudge it onto your pants, then kneel down to nudge it into the grass. Something else prickles on your neck. You sweep it off gently, into your hand and then into the grass. Another spider. You wonder how you ended up with two spiders on you. You look down at a shirt covered in broken strands of silk and remember. You ran through their webs last night, uncaring, unfeeling. It is the drug that robs you of empathy but you feel the blame is wholly yours nevertheless. You wish you could pay it back to them in flies.

"Are you okay?" asks a voice that is old, cracked, and nervous all at once.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm alright.. Just had a rough night" you reply, realizing suddenly that understatement may be your greatest talent.

"Oh"

"Don't worry about it" you say, and turn to face the source of that strange, sad voice. It is a little old lady, standing on the stoop of her home.

"You're sure you don't need anything?" she asks.

"Well, n-" you start, then stop. Her eyes look very small and lonely. "Actually, do you have any food?"

"Why yes!" Her face lights up. "I was just about to have my breakfast. Why don't you come in and eat with me?"